


Adaptation Theory

by anemicaxolotl



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Angst, Especially the finale, M/M, Post-Episode: s05e05 Geothermal Escapism, also major spoilers for like all of season 6, like the ending might truly be incoherent if you're not familiar with season 6 sorry, troy is sailing around the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28421349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anemicaxolotl/pseuds/anemicaxolotl
Summary: Troy leaves. Abed doesn’t really have a blueprint for this.Or: 5 people who can’t heal Abed, and 1 person who can.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 16
Kudos: 93





	Adaptation Theory

**i.**

Annie tries to be strong for Abed. She really does. But she misses Troy, too. Abed hears her crying through the door long after she says goodnight, and she spaces out in the study room, on the couch during movie nights, in the kitchen while they cook dinner. Her eyes glaze over and she sighs sadly, lost in her thoughts until someone pulls her back to Earth.

“I can’t stop thinking about what he said when he was leaving,” she finally confesses to Abed as they sit at their dining room table one evening. Her planner is open in front of her, and she scratches anxious lines in the corner of the calendar page with her pen. “He’s right. We could have had _four more years_ of friendship, and now – well, who knows when he’ll be back?”

Abed doesn’t answer. He’s busy, for one thing, splicing together videos of Troy at Greendale throughout the years into a highlight reel for their _Friends at Sea_ weekly digital newsletter. And for another, he’s already jealous enough of Annie for the four extra years she had of knowing Troy from a distance. He wishes she could just be grateful for the time they did get to spend together.

Clone Abed has been keeping a protective shield over Real Abed’s heart since Troy left, and it seems to be working relatively well at first. As long as he keeps moving full speed ahead through each day, he can keep his emotions at bay and ignore the perilous grief threatening to break through his splintering armor. But he’s getting so tired. Each day is an exhausting battle, and Britta’s cloning work is shoddy and his energy stores are quickly depleting.

All that to say that Abed is holding it together, but Annie’s constant weeping paired with her halfhearted stiff-upper-lip efforts are grating on Abed’s fraying nerves, and he loves her dearly, but she’s not helping nearly as much as she thinks she is.

“Maybe we can watch _Inspector Spacetime_ together soon,” Annie says brightly, wiping her eyes and putting one hand gently over Abed’s. “The new season is starting this week!”

Abed shuts his laptop and stands up. “Nope. Troy and I are going to watch it together over Skype this Sunday. We’ve got a standing Skype meeting every Sunday from now until he gets back from sailing around the world. But thanks anyway.”

“Oh, Abed…” Annie gives him her saddest Disney eyes, but he darts out of the room into his blanket fort before she can finish her thought.

**ii.**

“Got a postcard from your boyfriend yesterday,” Jeff says to Abed one day as the others file out of the study room. “He’s only been gone, what, three weeks? Anyway, he wrote about a sea turtle he saw, which of course made him ask about you. It’s in my car if you want to come read it.”

He moves to stand, but freezes when Abed speaks, a sharp edge to his voice. “You always refer to us as boyfriends.”

Jeff shifts in his seat. “I have been known to make that joke, yes,” he says carefully, watching Abed’s face closely.

“Pierce was the only other person who went out of his way to try and insinuate that Troy and I were gay and romantically involved as much as you do. And you’re not homophobic like Pierce. At least, I didn’t think you were. So why do you always call us boyfriends?”

“To be fair, one time I called him your girlfriend in a voicemail,” Jeff mumbles, but he winces. “Do I really sound like Pierce when I say that? I promise I don’t mean it the way he did. I just figured if I said it enough, eventually one of you would slip up and admit it was true.”

“Why would you think forcing us out of the closet like that would be good for any of our friendship dynamics?”

Jeff grimaces to hear it phrased like that. “Jesus, you make it sound so evil! I just wanted to know for myself. For science.”

When Abed fixes him with a dubious glare, he sighs. “Alright, fine. You want to know the truth? The reason I bring it up so much is because I wanted you both to know that if you really were together, you didn’t have to hide it from any of us. I wanted you two to be able to be happy.”

The words hang in the air between them.

“We were happy,” Abed finally says quietly. “But we also weren’t together.” After a beat, he adds, even more quietly, “I wish we were. I guess that’s not a surprise to anybody.”

Jeff watches him without knowing what to say for a moment. “I’ll stop saying it, if it bothers you. It’s a stupid joke anyway.”

Abed just shrugs.

“Alright.” Jeff stands up and claps his hands together once. “You know what you need? A guy’s night. Come to my car, you can read his postcard on the way to the Ballroom.”

“I’m not really in the mood for a bar tonight.”

“Then come to my apartment!” Jeff forces a smile. “Come on, it’ll be fun! I’ve got scotch. Or beer. Probably wine, too. Or we can stop and pick up whatever you want, there’s a liquor store right down the street…”

Abed shoulders his messenger bag and stands, taking a step toward the door. “A word of advice, Jeff? Before you get so concerned about my repressed feelings for Troy, maybe you should take a look at yourself and ask why it’s so important to you to see the group be accepting of two men in a relationship.”

He glances at Jeff’s face before the hurt, shocked look in his eyes makes him drop his gaze. “Lying to yourself is only going to hurt you in the long run,” he adds softly, pushing past him out into the hallway alone.

**iii.**

Annie has gone to visit her brother for the weekend and Abed can’t stand to be alone in the apartment for very long, so he somehow finds himself at Britta’s bar. She seems surprised to see him there, though she tries to cover it.

“Abed! What can I do for you?”

He thinks about slipping into a character for some shmaltzy bar dialogue, but he can’t bring himself to bother. Instead he sits down and says, “You know I don’t really like drinking, but I think I need a drink. Vodka soda?”

“I’ll join you. It’s pretty slow tonight.” Britta pours two strong drinks and slides one glass across the counter to Abed. “Cheers.”

“Na zdrowie.”

They sip in silence for a moment before Britta sighs. “I don’t know how we’re doing it, you and I.”

Confused, he tilts his head and waits for her to continue.

“I mean, for everyone else, he’s one of seven, right? But for you and me, it’s like half of a whole. Like half the puzzle is just…gone. And now we’re supposed to solve the puzzle with only half the pieces.”

“You’re talking about Troy,” Abed says quietly, because her puzzle analogy is confusing him a little, but he can’t pretend he doesn’t know what she’s saying.

Britta nods and twirls a curl around her finger, eying her split ends so she doesn’t need to look at Abed when she speaks next. “No one else gets it, you know? He and I…we just had something. Something special. Even though we broke up, even though we’re just friends now, it meant something – being the first person he ever fell in love with. You know what I mean?”

 _Woman,_ some cold, bitter part of Abed’s brain wants to correct her. _You were the first woman he fell in love with, not the first person._ But he can’t say it out loud, in case it isn’t true and in case Britta knows that.

“I was his first best friend,” he offers instead, “and he was mine. So I guess I do know what you mean, to some degree.”

She looks up at him with an expression on her face he’s come to recognize over the years as pity. “Yeah, I guess that’s almost the same,” is all she says, graciously, before picking up her glass and Abed’s. “Another round?”

Abed shakes his head but sits with Britta as she pours herself a shot, which she quickly downs before fixing herself another vodka soda.

He doesn’t know whether to be happy or hurt that Britta thinks of them in the same category when it comes to Troy. On one hand, it’s nice to think he’s at least as important to Troy as the woman who dated him for a year. On the other hand, he always thought he meant so much more than that. _Best friend_ doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it as _first love,_ but it’s a whole lot better than _ex-girlfriend._ A maudlin mixture of smug pride and bitter guilt swirl in his stomach, churning with the vodka already burning there and making him feel a little nauseous.

“I should probably get home,” he says abruptly, reaching for his wallet and startling Britta out of a quiet reverie.

“Are you sure? I’m here for another couple of hours and drinks are on me, if you feel like talking about Troy some more…”

The last thing Abed wants is to hear Britta talk about Troy some more. He slips out of his seat and slings his bag over his shoulder, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Thanks, but I better not. I’ll see you tomorrow. Be safe getting home tonight, okay?” he finds himself adding, because it’s the kind of thing Troy would say to Britta whenever she worked late and it feels appropriate.

She blinks, surprised, and then smiles. “Thanks, Abed. See you later.”

He leaves with a nod and a small smile of his own, brushing past empty bar stools and stepping out into the brisk night. The vodka is already starting to give him a headache, but the cold air feels good on his face as he begins the long walk back toward his empty apartment alone.

**iv.**

He’s barely awake the next morning when he hears a gentle, rhythmic tapping on the apartment door. He answers it in his pajamas and is mildly surprised, but not too shocked, to see Shirley, as narratively it just makes sense that she would be the next person he sees.

“Come in,” he says. “Are you on your way back from church?”

“I’m actually just on my way there!” she says, chipper as ever. “But I wanted to drop off some homemade muffins for you. You know, make sure you’re eating enough and taking care of yourself.” She gestures to a large basket in her arms. “Can I put these on the table for you?”

“Okay,” Abed says dully, watching her. She’s a burst of sunlight in the dim apartment, and she bustles around in an almost absentminded way, opening curtains to let in the light and brushing crumbs from the countertop.

“How are you managing in the apartment?” she asks gingerly.

Abed takes a seat at the table. “Fine. Annie’s only been gone one day and she’ll be back tonight, so…”

“Oh, I meant, um…” Shirley glances around before leaning in to whisper almost conspiratorially. “I meant without you-know-who.”

He really wishes people wouldn’t walk on eggshells around him, especially Shirley, who’s managed to save him from his own rock bottom on more than one occasion and should know better than to treat him like glass. “You can say Troy’s name. And it’s fine. We’ve got our weekly Skype meetings, so it’s almost like he’s still here. In fact, we have one tonight.”

Shirley gives him a long look as she shifts her purse handles higher up on her shoulder. “You’re a very brave boy, Abed. You know that, right?”

Something about her phrasing makes Abed uncomfortable – partly because it’s infantilizing and, more to the point, doesn’t feel true. But also because it sounds like the kind of thing a mother should say. “I’m not doing anything brave,” he insists, fiddling with a loose thread on his sleeve. “Troy’s the one who had to leave.”

“Well, yes,” Shirley says with a nod. “But you’re the one who had to stay.”

She squeezes his shoulder gently before seeing herself to the door.

Abed glances into the basket and sighs. Shirley has baked blueberry muffins, which were Troy’s favorite. He’d always trade Abed chocolate chip for blueberry. Abed realizes it’s probably never occurred to anyone in the study room to parse out their favorites, because the two of them were always able to trade each other for what they really wanted in the end.

He leaves the basket outside Annie’s door with a note that simply says, _From Shirley._

**v.**

Later that night, Abed sits on his bed, laptop on his lap, headphones on, keeping an eye on the clock in the corner of the screen but mostly staring at the Skype window.

It’s twelve minutes past eight, and Abed shouldn’t be worried, because it’s not really _that_ late, but he can’t silence his brain as it scrolls through a rapid-fire list of best- and worst-case scenarios. Maybe Troy hasn’t docked yet, maybe the WiFi connection is bad, maybe the sailboat is sinking, maybe there’s been a shark attack, maybe LeVar is tired of trying to accommodate Troy and Abed’s weekly Skype calls by sticking to the coastline as much as possible, maybe _Troy_ is tired of the Skype calls for some reason, maybe he’s tired of Abed…

He’s all but worked himself into a full panic by the time he hears the familiar Skype tune signaling an incoming call. He answers immediately, his face close to the screen as Troy’s appears. He looks the same as always, if maybe a bit more harried than usual. He hasn’t even sat down yet.

“Troy,” Abed says brightly, like he always does.

“Hey, buddy,” Troy pants, finally falling into his seat and wiping his brow. “Sorry I’m late, the wind was terrible today and we could barely get the boat in the harbor, and the WiFi is, like, _so_ bad out here. I hope it doesn’t cut out again like last time.”

He squints at the screen, checking his connection, and Abed notices the bags under his friend’s eyes for the first time. He can see the stubble on Troy’s face, too, like he hasn’t had time to shave in a couple of days.

“Troy, what are we doing?” he asks quietly, and Troy looks up at him in surprise.

“We’re doing our weekly Skype call, Abed,” he says hesitantly. “You know, you show me whatever videos you made for the _Friends at Sea_ newsletter, and I tell you about all the sea creatures I’ve seen…”

Abed shakes his head. “No, Troy, I mean…why are we doing this? How much extra time and effort are you putting into this trip so you can stay by the coastlines and call every week?”

He sees Troy shift uncomfortably before answering. “It’s not that bad! Really, I don’t mind it. I _like_ these calls.”

“I like them too,” Abed says, and hopes Troy can hear how sincere he is. “But I don’t think it’s working out anymore. It was never a practical idea to begin with. And it’s stressing you out.”

He glances down and picks at a loose thread on his pajama sleeve so he doesn’t have to see Troy’s face when he says, “Maybe it’s time we let each other go for a little bit so we can really be Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir on our own.”

Troy is silent for so long that Abed finally has to look up, and the betrayal he sees in his friend’s eyes is heartbreaking, but he refuses to give in.

“So…you don’t want to talk to me anymore?” Troy asks softly, blinking in a way Abed recognizes as a sign that he’s close to tears.

“I don’t want you scheduling your whole trip around getting in contact with me,” Abed says firmly. “The whole point of you leaving was to learn who you are without me, and I need to learn how to get by without you, too. I swear, Troy, these calls are the best part of my week…but it’s not fair to you to keep doing this. You should be focused on your own adventures, and becoming your own man, like you wanted.”

As Abed speaks, Troy puts his head in his hands, and Abed can see his shoulders start to shake. His eyes are red when he finally looks back up.

“Abed,” he whispers. “I never should have left you without telling you–”

“No.”

Troy blinks at the harsh edge in Abed’s voice. “No?”

“Whatever you’re going to say, I don’t want to hear it now. Not like this. If you still feel the same way when you get back – because I know I will – then I want to hear it then. And if you’ve changed your mind by then, that’s fine, too. I just…” He breaks off, shaking his head. “I don’t want to know that we were only a few weeks too late in figuring out something I’ve wanted for years. I hope you can understand that.”

Through the screen, Troy’s eyes are soft, and confused, and so sad, clear enough for Abed to read even across the miles. But eventually, he nods. “Okay,” he whispers. “If that’s what you want…I guess I’ll just, uh, keep you updated whenever I can?”

“Of course,” Abed says quietly. “I still want to hear about your trip. I just don’t want to be the thing that holds you back from experiencing it to the fullest.”

Troy looks like he wants to say something, but he closes his mouth after a moment and lifts his chin, determined. “Alright. If this is our last call for a while, let’s make it the best one yet.”

It is the best call they’ve had the whole time Troy’s been gone. They laugh and swap stories and reminisce, and they stay online for hours until Abed sees a glimmer of sunlight peaking over the horizon out his window. He sighs.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Troy murmurs, and somehow this is so much harder than saying goodbye to him the first time around. Maybe because Clone Abed is failing, and it’s harder to keep Original Abed’s emotions in check.

He tries to be strong for Troy, though, because he doesn’t want to watch his best friend fall apart again. “You know how to reach me,” he says with a small smile. “And if you can’t reach me, you know where I’ll be when you get back.”

Troy offers a wobbly smile in return, and they say their goodbyes, both of them lingering on the call to get a final glimpse of the other before Troy finally disconnects. It’ll be so good for him to be unmoored for real, now, untethered from any obligation to Abed and free to explore the vast world and all it has to offer. Free to become his own man, once and for all.

Curling his knees into his chest, Abed grabs a pillow, presses his face against it, and screams until his voice gives out.

**\+ i.**

Abed lives with the pain of missing Troy, and it hurts like a fresh wound each day. And then, one day, it doesn’t. It aches like a still-healing scab, one he learns not to pick at. And then it hurts like the soreness of a once-broken, healed-over bone: he feels it when he moves the wrong way, but he can resume all normal activities.

And then a remarkable thing happens when he realizes, like a bruise that only aches when poked at, it only hurts when he thinks about it. And he’s trying to think about it less and less as the months pass by.

When he finds an abandoned birds’ nest, he thinks he is like one of the baby birds, lonely and afraid its mother won’t come back. But he realizes the bird isn’t him, it’s Troy. So Abed learns to let the bird go, amid all the pomp and ceremony a creature like that is due. 

Then, Abed realizes hands are not only for holding, but for letting go. And later, he looks at an email blinking on his screen, rereading the first line – _Congratulations, Mr. Nadir, we’d like to offer you the job –_ and thinks it’s time he does a little more of the letting go part.

He gives his friends what he thinks is a pretty convincing speech about television, but he knows it’s about Troy, and they all know that, too. So no one is shocked when he says it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with LeVar Burton and never come back.

“Because eventually – it all will,” he says softly, nodding to himself, suddenly certain in what he has to do.

When he lands in LA, he buys a postcard. It’s just something cheesy he picks up in the airport, a shot of the Hollywood sign, because if he’s going to use a cliché, he figures he might as well go all out. He fills it out as soon as he gets to his new apartment. They all hear from Troy less and less these days, but when he can, he tries to send them itinerary updates – the routes he has planned and the hotels or hostels he hopes to stay at whenever he hits the next country on his list.

Abed addresses the postcard to Troy, care of his next expected hotel, and has to tell himself it’s okay if it doesn’t get there for some reason, or if by the time it arrives Troy is already long gone. He has to stop micromanaging what he can’t really control. He needs to live in the moments of improvisation, the off-book, unscripted occasions he can’t plan for. Moments like that have to be okay.

 _Dear Troy,_ he writes on the postcard, and he knows the message is going to be cloyingly clichéd, and there’s a cinematic part of his heart that can’t help but love that.

_Enjoy the rest of your journey. Mine’s just getting started in LA._

_If you decide to return to Greendale when your trip is over, I know Jeff and Britta will be happy to see you. If you decide to go to D.C., I know Annie will be thrilled. And Shirley would love a visit if you decide to check out Atlanta instead._

_But if you decide to come home when your trip is done, now you know where to find me._

_Love,_

_Abed_

He moves to stand by the window, taking in the sight of Los Angeles bursting into technicolor below him, ready for his spinoff to begin.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is brought to you by me listening to "A Lack of Color" by Death Cab for Cutie on repeat for truly several hours a day during my last week of my old job.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I'm on tumblr @ slutabed thinking way too hard about Community.


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